Providing outsourced support to council comms teams

The challenge

With a member of the ICC comms team going on maternity leave for a few months, the Invercargill City Council needed additional support. Scope was ready and available to step in to help with the immediate delivery of communications around major planned council infrastructure projects.

Our combined skillset complemented the talented team at ICC, and we were able to provide senior strategic communications advice as well as delivering comms tactics that met the brief every time.

The approach

Over an agreed period of time, we were tasked with delivering the communications requirements for:

• Te Unua Museum of Southland (Project 1225): Supporting communications requirements throughout the various stages of this important project, including the demolition process of the old, iconic pyramid-shaped museum. Anticipating a mix of public sentiment around the demolition, we worked with ICC to transform the moment into a celebration of the building’s legacy. We developed the social media-led #farewellpyramid campaign, which encouraged the community to share their museum stories and memories. We supplied ready-to-share social media tiles and copy, EDM copy and prepared a media release, for the council comms team to activate.
• Official opening of Te Moutere –Tuatara Island: Assisting the team with associated media relations tasks and copy requirements for this important event that achieved significant media coverage, plus providing on-the-ground support / media liaison at the facility’s official opening with the mayor, iwi, dignitaries and special guests.
• Branxholme Pipeline project: Providing direct assistance to the project leads and ensuring the necessary communications requirements were delivered for the appropriate channels, including Antenno, EDMs, social media posts, website copy and media releases. This was a major, disruptive project for the city so it was essential to provide clear and consistent communication to ensure positive public sentiment. We were delighted that we were able to achieve this.

The results

While the usual media metrics that we look at are always important, they weren’t our core focus. Importantly for our client, they were able to concentrate on other BAU tasks and have the confidence that we were delivering to their requirements. Scope provided seamless integration so the same quality standard was delivered for these special projects, as they are across all ICC comms.

Awareness and engagement goals were achieved:

• #farewellpyramid: Five posts netted 862 likes, 350 comments and 76 shares (in total)
• Media coverage for all three projects: More than seventy media stories across newspaper, magazine and online outlets – including, Stuff, Otago Daily Times, 1News, RNZ, Scoop and Newshub. The cumulative potential reach from these media mentions was 1,409,297 and the combined advertising space rate (ASR) was $649,119 NZD.

“I want to really thank you for all that you’ve done for us this year–without a whole lot of guidance from me! I absolutely love your work and have so enjoyed working with you all.”
Lisa Knight, Invercargill City Council Manager – Communications and Marketing